Original subtitles

[Joe Tone] When you think of drug cartels, you think of the drugs,

you think of the violence,

you think of money,

but you do not think of horses.

- [horses galloping] - [auctioneer chanting]

[Melissa del Bosque] There's this projected reality,

and then there's this whole world behind it.

[Doug Gardner] Horses, cocaine, money laundering...

I'd never seen a case like this before. I don't think any of us had.

[Jason Buch] A drug cartel was able to exploit a US industry,

but possibly the most interesting thing

was that somebody bothered to do anything about it.

[Scott Lawson] It was the biggest money laundering investigation in Texas history.

You know, for a new agent, it was the chance of a lifetime.

[police siren chirps]

But trying to dismantle the Zetas,

it really just appears impossible.

[reporter, in Spanish] The gunfire that you hear at this moment

it is a confrontation between federal forces

and organized crime.

Then it was like, holy shit.

We need to take 'em down before it got out of hand.

[Lawson] There's only so much you can view from the outside looking in.

[camera clicking]

What you really need is somebody on the inside of their world.

[man] I'm just making sure, because you know, people in Mexico is pushing me.

[Lawson] On the other side of any approach you make...

...could be you know, the barrel of a gun.

[man on phone] We are shot! We are shot!

I am an ICE Special Agent.

Three years to piece together this giant puzzle.

[Steve Pennington] Yeah, we were trying to take down

the most violent cartel in Mexico with paper.

Everybody was in way over our heads at that time.

- [gunfire] - [indistinct radio chatter]

[race bell clangs]

Here we go.

[theme music playing]

Good evening.

This is the first time since taking the oath of office

that I've felt an issue was so important, so threatening,

that it warranted talking directly with you, the American people.

All of us agree that the gravest domestic threat facing our nation today is drugs.

Our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more

by hiring a record number of new border guards.

The system is broken because there are people

who are exploiting human beings for material gain.

[Barack Obama] We are continuing to speed up the delivery

of equipment and training.

We're putting unprecedented pressure on cartels.

We will continue to send a clear message: that violence must stop.

- [man] The Zetas. - [man 2] Los Zetas.

- [man 3] Los Zetas. - [man 4] The Zetas cartel.

The horrific drug cartel.

It's incredible how violent the Zetas are.

[reporter] Strangled, stabbed, beat to death.

They have changed the rules of the game.

- [woman] The man, the legend... - [Lawson chuckles]

[woman] The Scott Lawson. Mark.

See, that's what I need in my life.

[laughs]

[Ben Hudson] We moved to the country in '98,

because I wanted to be around horses.

Put my hand on a horse every day,

and where I can smell those horses every day.

I'm... I'm hooked. [laughing] You know.

One of my all-time favorite country songs, country and western songs,

...was by Hank Thompson.

He had a song called "Money Trouble and Love."

And it's a great song. It says,

"It takes a lot of money to get you out of the trouble that love got you into."

[horse snorting]

Some real parallels there into, uh... into the racehorse business.

We've got money, horses, drugs...

And a Mexican cartel.

[horse whinnies]

The cartel guys, they're crazy about the horses.

They're really interwoven in the quarter-horse business.

And I just... I'd like to take some of those out of the web, you know.

Just get it down to good, honest people and good, fast horses.

Tough deal.

[cowboy] Go, go, go.

[Hudson] The quarter horse is the horse of the American West.

It's the horse that America's kids have grown up on.

You may think you don't know what a quarter horse is,

but you do, you've seen it.

When you see a cowboy riding a horse in the movies,

or when you see a horse loping across a ranch,

those are all quarter horses.

It's the cowboy's horse, and it still is the cowboy's horse today.

[Tone] It's tough, it's stocky, it's smart.

They're work horses, but they can run.

[people cheering]

We think of horse racing as thoroughbred racing.

the Kentucky Derby, right? They go around the track.

And we have a mint julep and we wear funny hats once a year.

But horse racing started in this country as quarter horse racing.

They call thoroughbred racing the sport of kings.

Quarter horse racing is the sport of cowboys.

[starter bell clanging]

It's dustier, it's a little grimier.

[horses grunting]

They're running for a quarter of a mile, and it all happens...

...in the blink of an eye.

The quarter horse racing industry is...

It... it just is... the epitome of the Wild West.

[announcer] They're off!

It has a history of doping, illegal gambling, fixing races.

It's not particularly well regulated.

Cash just changing hands.

Quarter horse racing is pretty corruptible.

And anything that can be corrupted, organized criminals love.

They can do anything to win,

and winning for them is millions of dollars.

There's a certain kind of guy

who usually populates the winner's circle.

It's ranchers and wealthy businessmen

who tend to win these races

and dominate the sport of quarter horse racing.

[announcer] Tempting Dash forging right to the lead.

[Tone] But all of a sudden, on the quarter horse racing circuit,

there's this new owner who keeps showing up in the winner's circle...

- [camera clicking] - ...named José Treviño.

[interviewer] Where will I find José Treviño?

Just like Tom pointed out,

this horse basically unknown in October was a sensation by November.

You've really got something special here, don't you?

- Well, I think so. - [laughter]

And I, and I hope it can get better over time.

[laughter]

[Hudson] José Treviño, he was a bricklayer or something like that.

He goed out and winned the million-dollar race.

You know, life-changing experiences,

and that's the dream that, you know, everybody wants.

[camera clicks]

[Tone] It was the American Dream.

A poor Mexican immigrant coming to this country,

making a living laying bricks,

turning that into a horseracing operation that was now making him rich.

And that's what everybody believed it was.

But everybody in the industry wants to know, who is this guy?

When there's a newcomer and they win an inordinate amount of races,

it kinda puts the spotlight on 'em.

Well, you've got a fantastic horse, that's for sure. Congratulations.

Yeah, thank you. I loved to buy that horse. It was cheap.

I think that, that's the reason they sell the horse,

because it got cheap.

And it was so small.

I know you guys notice that horse real small,

but he's real fast, too.

Small is good. Thanks very much, congratulations.

The champion two-year-old colt...

[people clapping, chattering]

My name is Scott Lawson.

[camera clicks]

From the time I can remember, I always wanted to be a cop.

I grew up in a very small rural town in West Tennessee.

With my parents being divorced,

I would go see my dad on the weekends, and...

He was a chief deputy for the local sheriff's department.

I would ride on patrol with him, you know.

My mom obviously didn't like that at all.

But, you know, I had that hero impression of law enforcement

from a very young age.

I think by the time I was 14, 15 years old,

I was reading John Douglas.

The pioneer of profiling in the FBI.

Through my dad's wisdom, you know, he always told me,

if you want to be in law enforcement, you need to go federal.

[people cheering, clapping]

And that was that seed that gave me this dream to join the FBI.

[woman] Atlanta!

[Lawson] I'd like to go east of the mighty Mississippi.

[laughter]

And south of the Mason-Dixon.

[laughter continues]

With that said, I'm going to New York City.

[man] I've been to New York. You're going to like it.

[sighs nervously]

[opening envelope]

San Antonio.

[people cheering]

Criminal.

I thought, well, it's Texas,

It's, uh... it's the South.

It's not quite as close to where I wanted to be as I thought,

but you know, that's manageable.

And one of the supervisors at the academy said, "Scott, come here."

So I walked over there and he said, "Son, you're not going to San Antonio.

You minored in Spanish and you used to be a police officer."

He said, "They're gonna send you to the border.

You're going to Laredo."

So I walked down to the library in Quantico,

and I Googled, "Laredo, Texas."

Two hyperlinks pulled up.

The first one said, "Laredo, Texas, the armpit of the United States."

And I was like, well that don't sound too great, you know.

The second article said,

"Laredo, Texas, the truck stop of the United States."

And I'm thinking, "What in the heck have I gotten myself into?"

- [water flowing] - [birds chirping]

[del Bosque] When I first started working on the Texas border,

I worked for a daily newspaper,

and I thought it was really beautiful

how united the communities were on either side of the river.

Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, they are sister communities.

There's just this really beautiful symbiosis

between the two sides of the river.

People always say, "The river doesn't divide us."

But as the years have passed, that's become less of the case.

[truck rumbling]

[horn blaring]

[traffic humming]

[whistle blowing]

The bridge in Laredo is the biggest crossing of trade

between Mexico and the United States.

There are a lot of trucks flooding across the border.

Of course, those trucks are great places

to hide drugs coming into the United States.

So, on the Mexican side of the border,

whoever controls those choke points,

the best places to get drugs across the border,

holds all the power.

Around 2009, we started hearing about a new cartel in Mexico.

[chatter on radio in Spanish]

They really plunged the whole border region

into a lot of violence in Mexico.

And we were really just struggling to figure out,

like, what is... what is going on here.

[tires screeching]

[distant rapid gunfire]

[gunfire continues]

[telephone ringing]

[low, indistinct conversations]

So as I was settling in to my new desk as my first week as an FBI agent,

my boss told me, "Here, we work against the Zetas."

And I began to look at a binder that was about three inches thick,

and tried to ascertain and understand who the Zetas were.

[machine gun fire]

And I began to learn that the Zetas originally were a military unit.

Part of the Mexican military.

They were not just gangsters.

They weren't your gang members running around with a gun.

They were highly trained GAFE, G-A-F-E,

which was their Special Forces military.

They had been trained at Fort Bragg in the US...

- [soldier] Side! Windows this side! - [soldier 2] I'm behind you.

...to go back and combat the cartels.

But that's not a good job,

because it doesn't pay that well and you're losing all the time,

so they start to flip.

[heavy gunfire]

[Lawson] They were bribed to join the Gulf Cartel.

So slowly but surely, members of the Zetas

start breaking off from the military and joining the Gulf Cartel.

[Gardner] The Zetas get paid in money

for being security for the Gulf Cartel and helping them run their business,

and then at some point, they start getting paid in cocaine.

Well now they can sell the cocaine and make their own profit.

[Tone] They start to figure out there's no reason

for them to work for the Gulf Cartel

and they can just be their own cartel.

[machine gun fire]

And they become the cartel known as Los Zetas.

The Zetas became the kings of the border, and of Nuevo Laredo,

and that changed everything.

All the cartels use violence to achieve their aims.

[siren wailing]

The Zetas took it to a different level.

[distant gunfire]

Everyone was talking about it.

I mean, it was sort of the number one topic of conversation in Laredo.

People checked Twitter before running an errand

or before running across the bridge

to make sure that where they're going is safe.

[del Bosque] The police chief of Nuevo Laredo said,

"Wait. No, I'm not afraid of these guys."

And within hours, he was gunned down in just this hail of bullets.

The message is clear: Nobody goes up against us,

nobody tells us what to do.

We are the law here now.

[camera clicks]

[Lawson] So the Zetas, with this military background,

they had a naming convention numbered by when you joined the cartel.

Zeta One, Zeta Two, Zeta Three.

When I got to Laredo, the Zetas were led by Zeta 40, Miguel Treviño.

[Tone] One of the scariest, most ruthless humans

that you've probably never heard of is Miguel Treviño.

There were stories that he had killed a rival's baby.

Sitting on a pile of bodies while you eat your lunch.

This guy was just psychopathic.

[Lawson] He was assisted by his brother, Omar Treviño.

Zeta call sign 42.

Both Miguel and Omar were on the most wanted list

with million-dollar bounties on their head.

The Zetas were violent.

Miguel and Omar Treviño were probably the most violent of the Zetas.

[Junker] He and his brother Omar would kill just to kill.

Their code was if you disrespect us,

if you take money, if you snitch...

...you're met with death.

[two gunshots]

[del Bosque] In the smaller border towns, you know, like Laredo,

the tallest building is always the federal building.

That's where all the federal agencies are.

And they're stacked sort of like a layer cake, you know.

In Laredo, it's like, DEA is on the top.

They've got two floors, they have all the money.

Down below is the FBI in the middle, and then you've got HSI,

which is part of the Department of Homeland Security on the bottom.

They're the new guys.

And they all compete for cases, jurisdiction...

So they were all kind of gunning for, you know, the leaders of the Zetas.

Forty and 42 was at the top of every criminal organization chart

for every agency that worked the border.

That, uh, just really just kind of scared me.

It was very intimidating.

I didn't know if I was ready, I didn't know how I would stack up

against the other experienced agents and analysts

who were trying to target the Zetas.

I knew there was lots to learn and lots of things to figure out.

[producer] When you started working with Scott,

what were your first impressions?

So, uh... Scott is a big man.

I think we used to call him Big Country when he first reported to the office.

Scott's Spanish wasn't great.

I mean, he could order a beer.

My Spanish was not anywhere as good as I thought it was.

So I learned pretty quickly that I was going to be a fish out of water.

But, what I knew is, I knew how to do the job.

[Jason Hodge] As soon as Scott came out of the academy,

my supervisor wanted to sign me as his training agent.

I probably had about five years of experience in the bureau at the time.

What I could help him with was just understanding how the bureau operated.

Hey, this might sound like it's a tough post, but you know what?

If you come in here with the right attitude,

you could make a good go of it.

But when you come out of that academy, and you land in Laredo,

they're gonna throw you in deep water, and you're either gonna sink or swim,

so you're gonna figure out how to swim pretty quick.

At the time, we had some investigations that were starting to pop up.

The Zetas were a focal point,

especially the big ones, Miguel Treviño and his brother Omar.

And we wanted to make sure that,

you know, the Zetas don't get a foothold here in the United States.

But we couldn't go into Mexico and conduct any operations or investigations.

They're not gonna cross into the United States.

They seem to be insulated in Mexico by all these territories they control.

And I have zero jurisdiction on the south side of the river.

As investigative agents who are trying to target the Zetas,

it really seems kinda hopeless

as to how you would ever target Miguel and Omar themselves.

The drug war is an unwinnable war to begin with,

but for a rookie FBI agent

who doesn't speak Spanish and has never been to Laredo,

there's no hope for him to catch a big case.

[Lawson] I'd been in Laredo about two months

when Jason, he turned around in his chair and he said,

"Hey Scott, I think I got something for you."

[Hodge] Scott was sharp. He was a smart guy.

You know, these agents, when they come out of the academy,

they're young, they're full of energy, they want to save the world,

they want to come in, they want to make a difference.

Well, the best way for him to learn

is for us to go out and do some work together.

He said, "Well we got this tip, you know, that just came in from Mexico,

that there was this really expensive horse bought at an auction in Oklahoma City."

[auctioneer] Ready to go! Somebody gonna get 200,000, get her on the money.

Two hundred where, hundred where. Three hundred...

[Lawson] Jason told me this horse named Dashin Follies

had been purchased for 875,000 dollars.

- [applause] - Seventy-five, eight seventy-five.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

[continues, indistinct]

His tip said that horse was bought

for the leader of the Zeta cartel, Miguel Treviño.

And I was thinking,

"What do horses have to do with the cartel?

How do they know it was Miguel?"

Like, all these crazy thoughts go to my head.

[auctioneer] Now 75... 850. Are we gonna get 875...

[Lawson] So in the American quarter horse world,

it's a very common tactic to use an agent to represent someone at an auction.

So Jason told me they'd identified the buyer's agent

for the purchase of Dashin Follies.

Jason was going to go try to interview this buyer's agent

and try to determine who had he bought the horse for.

[Tone] He goes up to meet this guy, Tyler Graham.

Tyler's the grandson of a famous rancher in Texas,

they've had quarter horses forever, at Southwest Stallion Station,

which is a breeding farm in Austin.

[Lawson] When Jason came back, he said that they had bought the horse

for José Treviño.

Miguel and Omar Treviño's brother.

So we looked into this and we learned that up until this time,

José was a bricklayer from Dallas, Texas.

So my first thought was, "Okay, we have this tip from Mexico

that says it was for the leader of the cartel,

and now we have a bricklayer buying a 875,000-dollar horse.

So it's not necessarily evidence, but it's not nothing either."

[Hodge] Knowing that a brother of Miguel Treviño was involved

went further to corroborate the tip that we had gotten.

[Lawson] We were learning more about their interest in this sport after this tip.

It was just a huge part of the Mexican culture.

And that has extended over time to the cartel leaders.

For Miguel and Omar,

to own these beautiful horses was a source of pride.

So we felt like, okay, there's something to dig into here.

So this buyer's agent, he bought a total of five horses for José.

But importantly for us, he brought these horses back to his ranch.

And he's been doing a legitimate job for José.

The care, the feed, breeding these horses.

All the things that make a horse operation go.

Jason says, "The buyer's agent, he's about your age.

He's in his twenties, he's a horseman, he's a country boy,

so I really think you may relate to him better than I do."

[Hodge] They kinda dressed alike, they kinda talked alike,

they both liked horses.

Yeah, they were almost like two peas in a pod, you know.

There were a lot of similarities.

[Lawson] He said, "I think, even though you're brand new,

you should be the handling agent for this potential source."

So an interview was set up for me to go back with Jason

to dig in and go a little further and, and see where this was going.

My first squad car for the FBI

was about a nine-year-old gold Impala with a dented hood

where another agent had run into a deer.

I remember thinking, "Only the FBI would send me to a ranch in a gold Impala."

So we're driving the three and a half hours to the Austin, Texas area.

I had all these emotions going through my head.

This is gonna be my first opportunity, I don't want to screw it up.

[knocking on door]

When I get to his office, we're both trying to size each other up.

He starts off with a super firm handshake.

Immediately thinking, "Is this like that challenge handshake,

or is that just his, 'I'm a good South Texan

and this is my presentation'"?

So we go to his office.

We ease into conversation about racehorses and what he's doing with his barn,

and what's going on with his breeding facility.

And as I kinda nervously start broaching the subject of José Treviño...

I'm thinking, "Does he know who he bought this horse for?

Does he know that José is the brother of the leader of the cartel?

Does he know what he's gotten himself into?

Maybe he already knows who these guys are, and maybe he's already working with them,

and he's gonna tell me to go get bent.

And he's going to tell them that the FBI's on their trail."

And he says, "Well, what do you know about Tempting Dash?"

And at that time, we didn't know anything about Tempting Dash.

[announcer] They're off. Looking good... goes out to a slight lead,

Tempting Dash is fast. Whoa! Just ducked in sharply.

He tells me that Tempting Dash showed up on the scene in Texas in 2009.

He was kind of unheard of, was crossed over from Mexico.

He tells me he was ran in this guy's name, name of Ramiro Villareal.

They call him The Horseman.

He said he knew Ramiro.

Ramiro was known to represent Mexican clients at various horse auctions,

and he says that Ramiro Villareal worked for José.

He said Tempting Dash ran under Ramiro Villareal's name in three races.

[announcer] Tempting Dash has been invincible!

[Lawson] Tempting Dash had already won approximately 400,000 dollars,

and this set him up to run for the Texas Classic.

[announcer] They're off! For the Texas Classic Futurity.

In this race, he could win up to 650,000 dollars.

[announcer] Tempting Dash clearly steals the show.

[Lawson] And, uh... he won.

But just prior to this race,

Tempting Dash was transferred to José Treviño for 25,000 dollars.

So he kinda explained to me, it's very unusual

to have a horse that has the potential to win almost a million dollars,

and then just decide to sell it.

Well, you've got a fantastic horse, that's for sure. Congratulations.

Yeah, thank you. I loved to buy that horse. It was cheap.

[Lawson] He said, "Nobody in their right mind is gonna sell a horse

that won 400,000 dollars for 25,000."

So at this point, I'd gotten this very vague tip from Mexico.

Here we have this bricklayer who has bought an 875,000 dollar horse.

[auctioneer] You got 800. Anybody got 825?

You got eight hundred thousand.

Now I've learned that he had a high-stakes racehorse transferred into his name...

[announcer] And it's Tempting Dash with another win.

...just days before winning a high-stakes race.

[announcer] This prize will be one million dollars

for its owner, José Treviño.

So, little lightbulbs are going off.

I'm thinking, "I know something stinks, but I'm not sure what it is."

I basically kinda laid out, you know,

"Hey man, I don't know if you know who you're involved with,

but, uh... you just bought a horse

for the brother of the most violent cartel in Mexico,

led by Miguel Treviño, call sign Zeta 40."

And I said, "With the Zetas, you either work with them or be killed.

I think you're in over your head, and we want to throw you a lifeline."

I said, "You know, we can walk you through this situation

if you'll put your trust in me."

It was at that moment, you could see that his eyes perked up.

And he said, "I've got this photograph that I think you should see."

He pointed me to a photograph on the wall.

It was the winner's circle from Tempting Dash for the Texas Classic.

In this photograph, José's daughter is holding four-zero,

and José's son is holding four-two.

The call signs of Miguel Treviño and Omar Treviño.

So I'm like, right here in the United States,

they're paying homage to their brothers in this trophy shot.

We're definitely onto something.

I just kept trying to figure out the why and the how...

You know, what is José doing in Texas, in the United States,

and how does it relate to his brothers in Mexico?

Well, this definitely went good.

We didn't fall on our face, and we weren't told to pound sand,

no attorney was asked for.

Kinda left it with, "Hey man, hit me up when something happens."

Now it's my job to look at this and see...

...had José had some stroke of luck to purchase these horses...

...and was really living the American Dream?

Or had he had some type of assistance from his brothers

to spend that kind of money?

Money obtained from narcotics in Mexico.

[cows lowing]

[Hudson] I started Track Magazine in 1975.

We cover racing and horse sales and profiles of industry leaders.

We go to every major horse race in the country.

I had never heard of Scott Lawson

until I picked up the phone and he said,

"I want to talk to you about some issues in quarter horse racing."

Scott wanted to know what I knew.

Tell me everything you know about José Treviño.

[Hudson] The Spanish influence and the Mexican influence in this business

is, uh... Is really big.

Some of our best owners, you know,

are, have been very successful... Mexican businessmen.

I really wasn't around José very much.

But the little I was around him, he was... he was a...

He was a nice guy.

As to their business backgrounds and their finances,

I said, "I have no idea."

[Lawson] So after that conversation,

we looked at José as somebody who could be on either side of the fence.

We really didn't know, what is his level of involvement.

When you're working an investigation,

there's only so much you can view, you know, from the outside looking in.

You really need somebody who is on the inside of their world.

When you're recruiting sources to assist you,

it's very much a question of trust.

You have to build that trust with them quickly,

that you're not gonna put them in danger.

[line ringing]

And you have to trust them

that they're able to play that role without exposing you.

[phone line ringing]

But with all those hurdles, in this case we had the gold nugget.

We had a source who was willing to record every conversation he had with him.

- [Graham] Hello? - [man] Hey Tyler. What's up, buddy?

Tyler Graham, who's like, the quarter horse racing industry.

He, you know, his family, his legacy,

and Tyler's connection with José Treviño.

He was the way inside of the organization.

[Lawson] So about two weeks went by, and I get a call from my source.

He tells me that José's operation is growing.

That he's planning to buy horses at upcoming auctions,

and that he's no longer gonna use Villareal, The Horseman.

He identifies to me this new guy named Carlos Nayen.

He's kind of José's right-hand man.

He describes him as this pretty guy

with his hair slicked back and his suits on.

He doesn't speak a whole lot of English,

so he introduced the translator for the group.

He looked more like a horse trainer.

And his name was Fernando Garcia.

He said, "I like Fernando.

He appears to me to be just a good old horse trainer."

[line ringing]

- [Graham] Hello? - [Garcia] What's up, homeboy?

- [Graham] What's going on? - Not much, and you?

[Graham] Just a little work.

[Lawson] But he also tells me that

ever since his Dashin Follies purchase in Oklahoma City,

that they owed 100,000 dollars still on that bill.

[Garcia] We're still working on getting the money together

so we can send it to you.

Talked to the accountant yesterday. I think we're going to have a good bunch

for you sometime soon.

[Graham] You know, I gotta have some more money.

There's still over a 100,000 owed, you know?

[Lawson] So he tells me Carlos Nayen showed up

with Fernando at his ranch in a Cadillac,

and said, "Hey, I've got this 100,000 dollars we owe you."

And the source sees six backpacks.

Carlos opens one of them.

The source's thought was, you know,

I think all of the backpacks are full of cash.

They had half a million dollars in the trunk.

It screamed cartel to me.

Typically in the horse business,

you've got businessmen writing checks, occasionally wires.

So when I heard, you know, that Carlos had showed up

with half a million dollars in the trunk in bulk cash,

there's not a whole lot of businesses that deal in bulk cash

that have a legitimate purpose.

So that was the first time for me and probably for him

where we were like, "Holy crap."

[Hodge] So our thought was, you know what,

what kind of a problem do we have here?

You know, on the surface it might look like horses would be silly,

but you know, these were actually assets over here in the United States

that couldn't be touched by their rivals over there in Mexico.

And the horses win races,

so it could also be not only a hard asset, but a revenue stream for 'em.

[Lawson] I'm looking at José, Miguel, and Omar,

going through 'em one by one.

When I saw what may be developing with this horse case,

we were like, "Man, this could be that the Zeta cartel

is laundering money through the horse industry.

This could be a way to go after Miguel and Omar

and dismantle the Zetas in a way that has never been done before."

[Hodge] We didn't know where this case would go,

but knowing it could be tied to 40 and 42.

I mean, if you can bring charges against those guys,

maybe you can get them extradited over here.

And we could finally, you know, bring them to justice.

But it's one thing to know something in your gut.

But it's a whole nother thing to be able to prove it.

[horse chewing]

[phone line ringing]

[Garcia] What's up amigo, how's everything?

[Graham] Everything's good, man.

I'm just calling to check in. I ain't heard from you in a little while.

[Garcia] Yeah, yeah, no, everything's good.

I'm here in Ruidoso, waiting for the trials.

[hawk screeching]

[TV announcer] Welcome to Ruidoso, New Mexico.

This resort town lies in the rugged Sierra Blanca Mountains

of south central New Mexico,

and is home to the world's first million-dollar race:

the All American, quarter horse racing's richest race.

The, the All American Futurity,

if you only go to one quarter horse racing event a year,

that's the one you need to go to.

[Lawson] So in July of 2010,

I get this call from the source, and he says,

"The Kentucky Derby of quarter horse racing is the All American Futurity."

It's probably the hottest weekend in the American quarter horse racing circuit.

It starts with this auction...

[auctioneer chanting faintly]

...and it concludes with the All American Futurity,

which is a two-million-dollar race payout.

Fernando had a horse named Mr. Piloto

who was actually qualified to run in this race.

He said, "He's been in Fernando's name all summer."

And he said, "I can bet you my bottom dollar

they're gonna transfer him into José Treviño's name for the race."

I knew that that's the race I needed to be at.

So I go talk to Raul, I'm like, hey man, I need somebody to go with me.

We're gonna go to the horse auction, and horse races,

and I need you to be able to blend in.

The whole horse industry to me was completely new, and out of my element.

I don't think I even rode a pony... [chuckling] when I was a kid.

But, um... I rarely miss a trip.

So I said, "Yeah, I'd go with him."

- [door closes] - [bags rustling]

[Lawson] So, me and Raul, you know, we get to our hotel at Ruidoso.

We're getting ready to go to the Friday night auction,

and for the first time, be in the same room

as these guys that we're targeting.

Raul and I had several conversations about...

What do we need to be doing? How do we blend in?

The worst-case scenario in a surveillance operation like that is getting burnt.

I think Scott wanted us to, you know, fit in.

["I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull playing]

[Lawson] Raul starts getting dressed,

and he puts on these white, Cuban-style, pointy shoes.

And then he starts putting on this white, button-down shirt

that's got a dragon on the shoulder.

I'm like, "Hey man, what the hell are you doing?

You're supposed to have cowboy boots, and, you know, a nice Western shirt."

I looked like Pitbull and... some country singer had a baby.

[Perdomo] When we got to the event,

there was folks that were dressed just like me.

Very similar, actually.

[song continues]

[camera clicks]

[auctioneer] Three hundred and fifty, 75... [continues, rapid, indistinct]

An auction is kinda like a Miss America pageant.

You have these horses that have been conditioned

to have all their muscles toned and glistening.

Their hair's been brushed.

They just go round the ring with a number painted on their hip.

Then there's the scoreboard at the top, just like at a basketball game.

It'll have the hip number on one side, and the bid amount on the other side.

[camera clicking]

[auctioneer chanting, indistinct]

There was a lot of people bidding,

but we were only focused on José Treviño, Carlos Nayen, and Fernando Garcia.

[auctioneer] Nine hundred and eighty one.

Eight hundred and seventy five.

Nine hundred thousand, do you want her?

Here we go! Six and a half, we got six 50.

So as these horses come across, I get the source and say, "Hey,

you know, which horses do you think they're going to buy?"

So he sends me 20 or so hip numbers that he thinks they'll probably purchase.

[auctioneer chanting, indistinct]

I remember one of the first ones, it was hip number, I think it was 330.

Carlos gets his phone out.

[camera clicking]

They're sending pictures, they're typing real quick.

And then they start bidding.

[auctioneer] Fifty, three hundred, three hundred fifty.

The horse goes for 300,000 dollars.

They then look up at the scoreboard, take a picture, and they send it.

[camera clicks]

And in my mind, they're sending it to Mexico.

That, to us as investigators, was important.

It tells us that someone else was calling the shots.

Otherwise there was no need to take pictures of the horses

immediately after you bid on them.

[snorting]

I mean, we don't know what's happening in those conversations,

but it almost looked like they were getting the okay

or the thumbs up to continue.

[Lawson] I had this 35-millimeter camera with this long lens.

[Perdomo] We had a very big lens.

That was one of the big concerns that Scott had.

We're there to document what's happening.

Who's there, what are they doing, who knows who.

That helps you develop your story and your puzzle.

[Lawson] So I'm like, zooming in, getting the focus,

and at that moment...

[camera shutter clicks, echoing]

José's eyes are looking right at mine through the camera lens.

And I'm like, holy crap. I just got made, right here, right now.

So I slowly try to pan away, and just pray.

Put the camera down, look at Raul, say, "Are we made?"

And, and we had this moment of thinking, "We just blew this whole case."

I shoot my source a text.

"Is everything good over there? Anything out of the ordinary?"

I wait, and I wait.

What seemed like forever.

Take a deep breath, look back to the right.

[camera clicks]

[people chattering]

José and the guys are bidding again.

I get the text back, "Hey, no, everything's cool."

I don't think anything's out of order.

So after that close call,

we decided we had pushed our luck enough for the evening.

We packed up our gear and decided it was best to get some rest,

and start fresh the next morning.

[announcer] There's no drawn quarter horse racing quite like the All American.

You're looking live at Ruidoso Downs.

And those are the silks. One of those silks will go down in history

as the winner of the 2010 All American Futurity.

[Lawson] So, at this race, we wanted to verify

that Fernando's gonna sell the Mr. Piloto.

See if he was gonna change ownership,

see if he was gonna do what Tempting Dash did.

Sure enough, we got a copy of the program,

and Mr. Piloto was now in Tremor Enterprises,

which was José Treviño's LLC.

[announcer] Ken, there's a look at Mr. Piloto on the racetrack,

trained by Felipe Quintero.

What's the experience been to come here and qualify one

for the All American Futurity?

Oh, I mean, the experience is marvelous.

I mean... just being in the All American,

I mean, it's, as I said it before and I'll say it one more time,

it's a dream come true.

I think we have a good chance.

[interviewer] You got to be in it to win it.

Let's start talking about some of the more serious contenders in here.

Mr. Piloto had the worst odds, he was the slowest qualifier.

We had been there... It felt like forever.

Taking photographs, collecting information.

[crowd cheering]

[Lawson] They load Mr. Piloto into the last spot.

The gun goes off.

- [bell clanging] - [gun fires]

[announcer] They're running.

Headed out for the lead, Prospect To The Top with Miss Racy Jess,

Dominyun got away fastest...

[Lawson] Mr. Piloto's in the tenth spot, closest to the inside rail.

All the other horses are kind of jumbled together, rushing out.

And halfway through it, we're like, oh my gosh.

[announcer] Mr. Piloto's coming on!

Dominyun! Mr. Piloto!

Mr. Piloto, Dominyun, and JLS Mr. Bigtime!

When they finally cross the line, nobody can really tell who won.

The fact that the first thing I heard the announcer say is...

[announcer] Three-way photo for the win!

[crowd cheering]

[commentator] This is unbelievable. The drama has not stopped.

The drama has gotten bigger, if anything.

We were waiting to hear the finish from up top.

Who really won this race?

[announcer 2] In a photo for the All American Futurity,

we're going right to shutter cam, Dave.

- [Dave] And Dominyun there as well. - [announcer 2] Dominyun right there!

[Dave] Three horses on the line together, a three-way photo.

Waiting for the numbers to still be posted on the board.

- [announcer 2] Nine one seven. - [Dave] Mr. Piloto!

[announcer 2] Mr. Piloto becomes the first horse ever

to qualify tenth to the All American Futurity,

and come back and win the biggest race two weeks later.

We were like, holy crap.

We just watched José Treviño

win the biggest horse race of the year, earning two million dollars.

[crowd cheering]

It was a long shot in the race, and... it was a complete stunner.

[announcer] Tremor Enterprises LLC, your winning owners here.

[camera clicking]

[Lawson] The first thing I saw was José jump the rail.

Carlos Nayen jumps the rail.

They both immediately get their phones out.

In my mind, they're calling Mexico,

saying, "Look, we just won a big one."

They go to the winner's circle, and there's Carlos, José,

and then Fernando walks in.

Now why in the world would Fernando be in the winner's circle?

He is the one who just sold this horse.

Fernando owned a horse that was running for two million dollars,

sold it, and transferred it to José Treviño.

Fernando has an opportunity to not only win the money,

but to be known as, you know, the best horseman of the year,

and you're gonna transfer that horse? Nobody's gonna do that.

[announcer] That was just, uh...

a race that we're gonna remember forever

and the connections of Mr. Piloto will remember forever.

We now had evidence that any horse that looked like

it could win big money for the cartel

was gonna be transferred to José,

so he could act like he bought the horse for a small amount.

And then here he is, the luckiest investor in the world

to win two million dollars.

RUIDOSO

[camera clicks]

[train rattling]

[Lawson] So we returned from Ruidoso to Laredo.

We got all the records and all the evidence

that we've gathered at Ruidoso over this weekend.

So at the auction, they ended up buying 22 horses.

Bidding up to what ended up being 2.2 million dollars in a horse auction.

[Hudson] José Treviño bought the three top sellers

and probably of the top 25,

he probably bought maybe ten of 'em.

You know, in the 40 years that I was in the business,

I've never seen an individual...

...come into a horse sale and do something like that.

[Tone] This industry, which had fallen on hard times before that,

everybody is celebrating these millions of dollars

having been spent on quarter horses.

And nobody's really asking the question

of where this money came from, except for...

How did they pay for that 2.2-million-dollar horse auction?

- Over the next three years... - [camera clicking]

...we looked closer and closer,

and a story unfolded.

[line ringing]

[operator] Good afternoon, 911. What's your emergency?

A story that's almost unbelievable.

[man] This lady just drove up on her Jet Ski.

[reporter] Shot to death on a lake

that runs between the US-Mexican border.

[Lawson] A story that I never thought that I would be a part of.

[reporter 2] One of the homicide investigators in Mexico

never came home last night.

[Tone] Scott, as a rookie, he's entering this grotesquely violent world...

[reporter 3] His head was found along the road that leads to Falcon Lake.

...where, if you're involved in it, you become a target.

Scott was in way over his head.

He just didn't know it yet.

["I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull playing]